The Thestral Clearing
by Lunarelle
Summary: A short prequel to Something Sweet This Way Comes, where Neville finds Luna in the Thestral clearing and finds the time to talk to her a little. Set during Order of the Phoenix. Rated T for a small passage about death.


**Disclaimer - The characters and settings all belong to J.K. Rowling. I am merely a visitor to Hogwarts.  
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"You're just as sane as I am."

Everyone looked at her as though she had lost her mind, but she was used to getting such stares. She looked back at each of them in turn before her eyes came to rest upon the round-faced boy sitting in front of her. He seemed to believe her. She could see it in his eyes.

She wondered sometimes why kids didn't like her. They called her "Loony" all the time, which had hurt at first, but now she hardly paid any attention to it. She didn't know whether this group was going to start calling her the same thing, but judging by what Hermione had said to her, she was pretty sure they thought she wasn't quite right either.

It made her feel strangely lonely, especially when they got to Hogwarts and made their way to the Great Hall. She could see everyone chatting happily, catching up and comparing summer vacations. But nobody smiled at her, or even invited her to sit anywhere. She took a seat closest to the exit, so far away from the closest person to her that she nearly fell off the bench. She didn't want to get up to grab any food, and so had to make do with what was directly in front of her during the feast: roast chicken and mashed potatoes, and for dessert, a slice of apricot pie.

Nobody offered her anything, nobody spoke to her. She felt alone on this first day of school, and she found that she didn't like it.

 _But nobody likes you_ , she thought to herself. _You_ _'_ _re a little different, and they don_ _'_ _t want to be around that_.

Whatever the case was, when she went to bed that night, nobody said good night to her, not directly. She threw a generic evening greeting to everyone as well, but her roommates didn't acknowledge her. She fell asleep, feeling lonely for the first time since she had started coming to Hogwarts.

The first few weeks of school went by. She went to class, studied, did her homework, and tried to keep her head down and not mention anything like Nargles or Heliopaths. It made for a bit of a boring time for her, but it was what everyone wanted: for her to curb her eccentricities.

But she loved Heliopaths. The idea of spirits of fire was fascinating to her, almost more than the idea of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack.

One afternoon, she walked towards the Forbidden Forest, meaning to go see the Thestrals who lived there. They were like her – misunderstood and distrusted because of their differences, and she'd always felt a certain kinship towards them.

On that particular afternoon, she wanted to spend time with them because she felt decidedly gloomy, which wasn't normal for her, because she always tried to see the good in every situation. But someone had stolen most of her clothes and shoes out of her closet, and she only found herself with a purple pair of trousers and a rumpled yellow sweater that she'd forgotten in her closet the previous year, so she was in uniform.

She sat on the ground, toying with the fallen leaves and watching as a young Thestral came out from behind a tree and cautiously stepped towards her. She had some raw meat in her bag, and threw it to the creature, who caught it and began eating it with gusto.

"You're not ugly, are you?" she said to it. "No, you're graceful and lovely, even if you are a bit dark for people's tastes."

The Thestral came closer and closer until it was able to nudge her foot, clearly wanting more meat. She smiled and took another piece of raw beef from her bag. This time, it ate it right out of her hand.

A noise from behind the juvenile made her look up, but it was nothing to be afraid of. Two fully grown Thestrals, probably the young one's parents, were watching its interaction with her, partially concealed by a couple of large bushes.

Suddenly, the juvenile reared, spreading its large leathery wings, and took refuge beside its parents, making small screeching noises.

Luna turned her head, seeing someone's shadow on the ground. The person was walking quietly, trying not to make noise, but the Thestrals had heard him, and Luna could as well.

It was Neville, and he seemed surprised to find himself in her company. What he was doing there was a mystery, but after a second or two, she noticed he was lost.

"Hi," he said uncertainly, glancing from her to the Thestrals. "What are you doing here on your own?"

"Sometimes I do better when I'm away from everyone to think," she replied.

"Why are you in uniform?" he asked. "It's Saturday."

"Oh, someone thought it would be fun to take all my clothes and shoes, except for a few things that I can't wear together." She looked at him to gage his reaction. Would he laugh?

"I'm sorry," he said. He sounded like he meant it. "Why do they do that?"

"I think they're just having fun."

"Stealing your things is fun for them?"

"I suppose they get a laugh out of seeing me look for everything."

"But why?"

"I don't really know. I'm like them," she pointed to the Thestrals, who were now grooming their young one and getting ready to leave since there didn't seem to be any more food. "People think I'm weird, and I suppose I am, but I feel that I shouldn't let that stop me from being myself."

"They think you're weird because…"

"Because I believe in things they don't, I look the way I do… I'm not sure why that's a problem, but it's best for me to be here on my own than in the school where people can see me being on my own."

"It doesn't seem fair. Don't your friends help you out?"

Luna smiled, but didn't vocalize an answer. She didn't really have to. In the three years she'd spent at Hogwarts, she hadn't made any friends. Her housemates talked to her only when they absolutely needed to and had never bothered to get to know her.

Neville looked sad for a moment, then glanced at the departing creatures, "So, how come you can see them?"

"Oh, well, you know about Thestrals, only people who have seen death can see them. Others will only feel them." She waited for him to nod before going on, "I was in the kitchen with my mother once, and she was experimenting with a spell – she loved to do that, you know."

"What happened?"

"The spell backfired and hit her right in the chest. She fell backwards and hit her head on the kitchen counter. By the time my dad came home, she was gone." She looked away from Neville, remembering the incident. She remembered the blood on the counter, horribly red against the gleaming white of the tiles the made up the working area.

"I'm sorry, Luna. That's terrible."

"Thanks. It was a long time ago, and anyways, it means I can see Thestrals now. I was always wondering why other kids couldn't see them."

"I saw my granddad die. He was sick and died in front of us in St. Mungo's. My gran was really sad about it." He didn't seem to know what else to say, but having him there sharing his experience with her was like a soothing balm she hadn't known she needed.

"Nobody's ever told me anything about themselves before," she said quietly. "Thank you, Neville."

Neville looked uncomfortable, but didn't make up any excuse to leave, although she wouldn't have been surprised if he had. "So you come here with the Thestrals to be alone?"

"I'm always alone." She hadn't quite meant to say that sentence aloud, but now that it was out there, she might as well tell him, "There aren't many people interested in getting to know me. After that first week of introductions in our first year, nobody really came to talk to me, and I gave up after a while."

"You shouldn't. Even I have friends."

Luna smiled, "And even they think I'm weird."

"I guess they just don't know you."

He didn't know her either. One little story didn't mean that they knew each other. But it was more than she'd ever known about anybody else in the school, except for Harry Potter, of course, but everybody knew about him.

But nobody knew that by the age of thirteen, she already knew how to mend bones because she had a habit of walking barefoot in her dormitory without paying attention to where she was going. Consequently, she'd broken her toes on four separate occasions, and had learned to mend them with Madam Pomfrey's help.

Nobody knew either that her ambition in life was to become a magizoologist and to discover new species that others felt were no more than a myth. She was sure that she'd discover a Snorkack one day or a Heliopath, and she couldn't wait to get started.

But Neville seemed interested. He asked her what she was planning to do about her clothes and when she said that she'd work on trying to Summon her things at random intervals, he smiled.

"I was already able to get my scarf when I was in the Defense corridor. Someone had wrapped it around a statue's neck."

"I thought only Slytherins did stuff like that.

Luna didn't say much else. She just sat with Neville for a while longer, until he told her that he had actually been looking for Professor Grubbly-Plank to talk to her about Bowtruckles.

"Do you want to come with me to talk to her?"

She agreed to help him look for her, because she hadn't been anywhere near Hagrid's hut, but they found her fairly quickly, collecting what appeared to be doxy eggs. After a few minutes, she bid him goodbye, and he told her that she'd be welcome to join him and the others anytime she felt like it.

It was the first time anybody had made that kind of offer to her, and she was grateful for it, even though she felt that he had done so out of pity for her.

But for the rest of the month, she thought about him. He'd been so thoughtful with her. Their conversation wouldn't have been deemed spectacular by anybody, but for someone who was lonely, it had felt like something new and exciting.

Why had he cared about her feelings? Was it just the way he was, or had he really just wanted to be polite? She couldn't tell, but she'd felt comforted by the thought that someone had taken the time to talk to her, even for a little while.

 **The End**


End file.
